You make very good points, and I agree with all of them. I certainly wasnāt trying to diminish the amount of work it would take to switch over.
But in my case, Home Automation was never just a novelty, nor was it a techie hobby: itās something I need for my everyday safety and independence. So there are some use cases which I am willing to solve even if it takes more time and money than a more able-bodied person would want to spend.
So really I just wanted to highlight the fact that many of the use cases you listed could be solved in an alternative manner. Again, thatās not to diminish the amount of time and effort it would take to do so. But there is a difference between ācanātā and āmight not be worth the effort,ā and for some of us the reward/effort calculation has some extra factors.
(By the way, that works both ways. Since I have to pay someone else to do any of the physical manipulation, even popping the batteries on a sensor, some glitches are much more significant to me than they would be to a more able-bodied person. So that also affects my decision making. )
Based upon that comment, I changed my vote from āProtect the privacy of my locationā (I really have devices I do not want Alexa have access to) to āCustomize which voice assistants control which devicesā.
(But I really wish that option was simply: āCustomize which devices a voice assistant can controlā)
I am specifically not asking about āeliminating duplicatesā. Thatās a side effect of not being able to customize which devices I can expose.
Yea ā¦ safety is a big concern ā¦ my sister at her house told alexa to " turn off all bedroom lights" at her house and opps turned off momās oxygen in my parents bedroom at their house (seperate
location) ā¦ that is how I found out there was an issue a few weeks ago.
In my case, itās a medical monitoring system. I have it plugged into a smart plug so I can reboot it if needed. (Very rare, but it can happen, and I canāt do the plug myself.)
This is part of my home automation system, but I do not want it on voice control. If needed, I can toggle it through the app.
Tagging @blake.arnold in case specific examples are helpful.
This actually isnāt true at all. Our power users and community devs are considered in all the decisions weāre making and weāre trying actively NOT to lose community power users. The problem is that often we have to choose between an architecture that works for everyone and one that supports individual edge cases. With as flexible of a platform as weāve created so far, there can be A LOT of edge cases. As Iāve said before, please work with us, be patient, and keep contributing to the conversation.
Hereās another use case that will be ramping up dramatically as people migrate off Classic: virtual switches to control STHM Security. Since STHM doesnāt allow third party smartapp control like SHM did, a lot of people are going to be using virtual switches to control STHM. I donāt want those virtual switches in Alexa or Google Home.
Thanks for the suggestion - weāve heard a lot of feedback about space at the top. Location status icon and users selectable icons (like the favorites from Classic) make sense. Iāll make sure the comments get to our UX team for the next revision.
My virtual switch/sensors have stopped triggering Alexa routines since I enabled the new Alexa Voice Assistant functions. So, no, as of right now you canāt do what you describe.
By far the most useful feature TO ME would be a search bar that I can start typing and it filters the devices. Similar to the menu/devices selection but more readily apparent. With 150+ devices sometimes I just want to find the dining room switch instead of scrolling for ages.
This! Thatās precisely my use case since recently performing the migration.
But also, I would like Alexa to be able to access and control some of my other virtual switches and use them in Alexa routines, which is now broken for me since āupgradingā to the new skill. My current situation with the SmartThings - Alexa integration is that Alexa has access and control over things I donāt want it to have access to, and simultaneously canāt control the other ones in the way I want. Truly the worst of both worlds!
Yeah, Unfortunately there are a number of people with that issue, although itās not everybody and it seems to be something of a mystery. They are even multiple people where itās been turning on and off over the last week or so so it works for a while and then it stops working. Incredibly frustrating!
Please tell us how we can diagnose/troubleshoot the issue. Iām tech savvy enough to get into low level details and would be happy to provide diagnostics and logging info to help track it down.
Again, Iām just another customer who happens to be affected. To talk to a staff member who is tracking the issue, see the following thread. (The topic title is a clickable link)
Iād suggest giving us options for how the dashboard looks. The current list of all devices organized by room probably works great if you only have a few devices, but as youāve heard itās painful when home automation becomes an obsession.
If @Kevin_Reene wants the Devices tab to be his landing page with the search bar up top, then let him set that as his default view.
Iād probably prefer having Rooms be my landing page. Thatās what Iāve been using most in Classic as my devices have ballooned out of control. It just makes sense to me to drill down with a couple taps. I donāt like the current scrolling, and I donāt think the search bar would be something Iād use enough to want it taking up real estate front and center.
I certainly wasnāt trying to diminish the amount of work it would take to switch over.
